– Follow me, – I say, – Unfortunate, we'll leave for a minute! If something happens, we're in the stairwell somewhere.

Vika follows me obediently. It's clean and quiet in the stairs. I put my finger to my lips:

– Hush… Don't disturb anyone…

– But you've said there's nobody else in the house… – whispers Vika.

– But what if not? – I answer mysteriously, pad to the door opposite to mine and take a piece of bent wire from my pocket. It's just like I imagine a picklock. Vika waits, already intrigued.

I pick at the wire in the lock and of course it opens. Sure, it was planned this way… Then we enter.

It's a big three room apartment { 'two bedroom' according to American standards }. Some clothes – jackets and cloaks hang on hooks by the door. A kid's bicycle is leaned against the wall. Footwear is scattered along the wall. I give slippers to Vika, change myself and say:

– It's a habit to change footwear inside here. The family is big, four kids, they would take too much dirt from outside… and the floors are cold. { Floors are almost never carpeted in Russia, they are either painted wood or vinyl covered. Some rugs and carpets are common but these never cover the floor completely. } Vika stays silent, she have accepted the rules of the game.

We look into the kitchen – an old Polish kitchen furniture is there, yet from the Soviet times, lots of spices' jars, some sorts of pickled veggies and jams in big cans. The pot with hot borsch is on the stove top together with a pan of meat rissoles. A quiet green street can be seen outside the window and Vika glues to it instantly. Kids shout outside on the playground, a woman walks with an old slow poodle just by the doorway.

– Who lives here? – asks Vika.

– I know only their names – Viktor Pavlovich and Anna Petrovna. Their older daughter Lida finishes high school, and they also have three boys: Oleg, Kostya, Igor'.

After some hesitation I add:

– The poodle is named Gerda. In general I don't like when pets are named by human names, but they wanted so.

– What city is this?

– Vitebsk. I think it's Vitebsk.

Vika turns her back to me and says strictly:

– Don't come into my view.

For a minute or so she examines the kitchen after exiting virtuality. Then, having dived back, she turns to me and asks:

– Is it everywhere like this?

I nod.

– Masters are absent but their apartments live, – whispers Vika, – A shirt on the back of the chair, toys scattered on the floor, a leaking faucet and trash swept under the sofa by the single… Right?

I keep silence.

– Len'ka, are you normal at all? – asks Vika quietly, – I was building mountains where is no people, where shouldn't be any people… it's strange too maybe. I just don't like people too much.

– Don't lie, – I ask her.

– … And you have built the house in which nobody will ever live… No, the house which is *almost* inhabited: a smoking pipe in the ashtray and the hot teapot on the stove… Modular 'Maria Celesta' { kitchen furniture }. Lenia, what for?

– I didn't have right to lodge them really, to think out characters and faces, griefs and joys. Let it be like this… the things only. They also can tell a lot.

I still think she doesn't understand, can't understand completely and I say hurriedly:

– A guy lives one floor below, a music lover. He's from Podol'sk. Sometimes he's too carried away and cranks his tape player so loud that it's necessary to knock into his wall. But he's a nice guy, he makes the volume lower at once. He has a great collection, cassettes, vinyl, CDs, a little of everything. Vinyl mostly, it costs peanuts now, nobody needs it, and he has a Vega turntable, an old one but it works fine. On the sixth floor a weird type lives, I think he's an engineer, works on a plant in Tula, they were making weapons before, now – some consumer trinkets. He dreams of writing 'love mysteries', he invented this sort of a genre… So he writes them, types on a typewriter in the evenings, but never shows to anybody. He understands himself that it comes out bad, he's a rare type of 'graphomaniac', a harmless one. I took his writings sometimes, looked through, it's really rubbish, but so kind and naive one, he should have been born in the XVIIIth century…

Vika doesn't reply and I go on, understanding already that I've made a mistake, I shouldn't have shown her this empty apartment, and even less – to tell her about others, she won't ever understand this weird stuff, these ravings that I was building for two years…

– There's an old woman on the third floor, she lives alone in three room apartment, her life is hard, I know… especially because she's from somewhere in Ukraine, from Kharkov, I suppose. She turns the TV on only when the soap opera is being shown, and even then she keeps the brightness down thinking that less power is being consumed this way and the tube doesn't wear off… But she fears to sublet the rooms or to change her apartment, maybe this is right… I seldom visit her, I can't help her anyway, and it's dreadful to see how she is living. Especially before the holidays, you know, the most terrible-looking poverty is the one that tries to celebrate the New Year. Her children have forgotten her, or maybe she never had them or they were killed in wars, she has a picture on the wall – a guy in the Russian military uniform…

Vika keeps silence.

– There's a couple on the second floor, they are funny. Married for just a year, from Ufa. They quarrel all the time, then make peace, sometimes one can hear them from the staircase… sometimes the cup gets shattered, sometimes they shut the door with such force that plaster falls down. But anyway it seems to me that they'll never divorce, something keeps them together, either some secret or love or both; love is a great secret too, you know… And the three room apartment there is empty… just empty. The Jewish family lived here, then they left, selling the apartment to some mediator company which still can't get rid of it… probably they've boosted the price too much, the apartment is in Moscow, in a good district…

I'll suffocate in this silence, in her not saying a word.

– The disabled old man lives on the first floor, he moves with crutches, possibly the most noisy and caustic person in whole Kursk. He brawls in shops, quarrels with neighbors, I always pass the first floor as fast as I can, fearing to run into him, but it's not right, it's not his fault that he became what he is, it's life… Life.

I can understand myself how ridiculous does this word sound here.

Life? What life – in the drawn apartments of the drawn house, in these concrete crypts where only things remember people. Only neutron bomb would appreciate this, not an alive woman.

I'm really an idiot, a clinical case. Ah well, still for good: Vika can start working on her new thesis.

– Len'ka, – says she, – My God, Len'ka, what happened to you?

Oh yeah, here comes…

– Forgive me, – she says, – All my screams… about the work with psychos… about all those assholes… if I was hit like you…

– Vika… – I can't understand a thing anymore.

– Somebody deserted you, betrayed you? You lost the ideals you wanted to believe in? And you gave up? – she asks quietly, – You don't believe that you can help somebody, to do a bit of good? And you ran away here, into the deep, into the fairy tale? You really can love but you fear your love?

– I can help – here. Here only. At least by dragging the ones who got lost out of this drawn world. But you know, one drowns not when he can't swim, one drowns when there's no more strength to stay on the shore. And the shore… it's not in my power anymore.

– You don't see any hope at all there, in reality?

– I do – now. Now Unfortunate have appeared.

– Lenia, you hide something! Do you know who is he?